Europe

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

We’re shut out now. There hasn’t been an op-ed in The New York Times or Washington Post editorial pages arguing that the United States is at least equally to blame for this new Cold War crisis. They simply will not accept those articles…So this is the problem. In a democracy we fight through discourse. If you can’t get to the mainstream media  and make the argument, then there’s no way of slowing the drift toward catastrophe.

 

Barron's Asia: When you look ahead to 2017, what keeps you awake at night?

 

Amando Tetangco: Short term, the Fed rate hikes -- the timing and the magnitude. Of course, this would be related to the policies that the new U.S. administration will adopt. Medium-to-long term, the retreat from multi-lateralism. That is related to the performance of the global economy - the major and various economies, and emerging markets like China.

 

Via The Daily Bell  

 

Trump Floats Ban on Defense Firms Hiring Military Procurement Officials … US President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he was considering imposing a lifetime ban on US military procurement officials going to work for defense contractors, a move that could dramatically reshape the defense industry. -Reuters

On Wednesday, Greek yields surged when it emerged that diplomatic relations between Greece and the Eurogroup had broken down once again, after European finance ministers suspended negotiations over granting short-term debt relief to Greece as a result of pledges by embattled Greek PM Tsipras unexpectedly said he would grant low-income pensioners a pre-Christmas payoff by spending €600 million to the nation's 1 million low-income pensioners, to replace a Christmas bonus scrapped by the Greek bailout supervisors.